«Тахиййат»: Сборник статей в честь Н. Н. Дьякова

m 77 n Magda El-Nowieemy Beyond the Boundaries: an Egyptian Literary Adaptation of Greek Philosophy 1 T his paper engages in the ongoing debate in the fields of both com- parative literature and reception studies. To gain a better understanding of my words let us see them in a broader context. We should recall that there are more specifically historical factors, which should be taken into account. The culture-based term “beyond the boundaries” leads backward, as well as forward. The idea of “beyondness”, used here, com- prises an analysis of certain aspects of the interaction of both ancient Greek and modern Egyptian thought, in a way that implies a long path of historical Arabo-European communication. This communication, in some of its aspects, enriched and stimulated the act of enlightenment for both sides. It should be conceived as a mutual enlightenment that might be epitomized in two main stages (see El-Nowieemy 2011): 1. On the one hand, the translation movement which started at the Umayyad period and reached its climax at the Abbasid period, contributed a great deal in preserving the Greek legacy, and re-introduced it to the Middle Ages of Europe. Hence, the European Enlightenment benefited itself from Arabic culture, a cul- ture which had a key role in generating European classical cultural aspects that eventually made a quite considerable impact on Europe in the Renaissance. 2. On the other hand, in the 19 th Century, the Arab World (Egypt and Leb- anon as particulars) underwent a rapid and revolutionary social, and conse- quently, cultural changes. Hence, the openness to the contributions of modern Europe formulated the cultural environment in Egypt as well as in the Arab 1 This is an expanded version of a paper initially read at the 19 th Triennial Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association , ICLA , held in Seoul, South Korea, August 2010.